Dallas County residents seeking a taste of the wilds, the summer of 2020 is your year!
Dallas County Conservation Board will host its third Adult Wilderness Backpacking Trek to the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness of north-central Idaho. Can you picture yourself wild? Accept this invitation, and venture with the Dallas County Conservation Board (DCCB) to the largest federally designated wilderness in the lower 48 states.
Join us at Kuehn Conservation Area Tuesday, June 18 from 7:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. for the second in a series of informational meetings, designed to invite you to grow wild with DCCB in 2020.
We are extending this invitation to any adults in Dallas County with an openness and desire to front the rigors, challenge, and rewards of wilderness travel and explore the role of nature and wildness in their lives. There is not prerequisite for this trek.
Trek participants will undergo a series of workshops teaching them wilderness backpacking skills, Leave No Trace camping techniques, map and compass navigational skills, all while working to foster an awareness and understanding of wilderness values, ethics, history and ecology.
Additionally, the DCCB will loan participants on the trek our backcountry camping gear, to reduce the monetary stress of outfitting your initial wilderness trek.
At the June 18 Try the Wilds on for Size program, you will have a chance to set up a backpacking tent, inflate a sleeping pad, roll out a sleeping bag and climb inside. We will light a camp stove and prepare a couple of backpackers’ dehydrated meals so you can sample the cuisine of the trek. We will also hang a bear bag.
The DCCB’s array of backpacks will be presented, and you will be invited to size one up and throw it on your back. We will lay out a topographic map of our trek’s trail and introduce you to compass skills used to navigate in the wilds.
It is the goal of the June 18 meeting to address as many logistical questions related to a wilderness backpacking trek as we can to help you make your decision as you consider joining us on the 2020 trek. Try the wilds on for size, and explore the notion that you might join DCCB in the summer of 2020, venturing to the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness and growing wild.
Ken Keffer is the outreach coordinator for the Dallas County Conservation Board.
